Chapter IX: Part IV (2)

That Placido was at the head of this conspiracy there is not a doubt; but what his plans in detail were, I know not; the means of acquiring them are not within my reach. Nevertheless, from the treatment throughout of the Cuban authorities towards Placido, we may safely conclude that Placido’s plan in detail evinced no lack of ability to originate and execute, nor of that sagacity which should mark a revolutionary leader. Placido hated slavery with a hatred intensified by the remembrance of wrongs which a loving and loved mother had borne. The iron, too, had entered into his own soul; and he had been a daily witness of scenes such as torment itself could scarcely equal, nor the pit itself outdo. Call you this extravagance? You will not,—should you but study a single chapter in the history of Cuban slavery.

Do you honour Kossuth?—then forget not him who is worthy to stand side by side with Hungary’s illustrious son.

What may be the destiny of Cuba in the future near at hand, I will not venture to predict. What may be her _ultimate_ destiny is written in the fact that,—“God hath no attribute which, in a contest between the oppressed and the oppressor, can take sides with the latter.”

This sketch, though hastily written, and meagre in detail as it must necessarily be, will show, at least, by the quotations of poetry introduced, that God hath not given to one race alone, all intellectual and moral greatness.

[Signature: Wm G. Allen]

TO THE FRIENDS OF NEGRO EMANCIPATION.

The following powerful Appeal, reprinted from the “_Uncle Tom’s Cabin Almanack_,” will not, it is hoped, be deemed an inappropriate termination of this most interesting Volume:

Many of the interpreters of prophecy consider that England is one of
“the ten horns” of the beast, or Roman power, referred to by the
Apostle John. It is also allowed that, in the highly figurative and
varied language of Scripture, the monster of the Apocalypse is the
same as the image of Daniel, whose feet were partly strong and
partly fragile. In a being that has to stand, walk, fight, and run,
very much depends upon the lower members. The physical man of Louis
XVIII. was very kingly as far as his hips, but his extremities were
feeble, and it was a poor affair when he attempted to walk. Now this
is the very spirit of Daniel’s description of the Roman power. It
had no good legs and feet to stand upon, for they were part of iron
and part of clay, partly strong and partly fragile. As a limb of old
Rome, we are at present in this very predicament. Thank God, we have
a great deal of “_iron_” among us, both metallic, mental, and moral;
but we have an enormous quantity of the old Pagan “_clay_,” and
hence our strength and our weakness.

Passing over a host of subjects which might illustrate what we have
just stated, we now refer only to the _slavery question_. Here we
are strong, and we are also feeble. The twenty millions we paid for
the emancipation of our slaves in the West Indies was one of the
most generous acts of the nation, especially if we consider the
burden of taxation under which we were then groaning. Such a
sacrifice at the shrine of cupidity, for the noble and glorious
object of bursting the yoke of the captive, exhibited no small
degree of moral principle and power. But some beheld in this
munificent price the “clay” blended with the “iron.” Not a few of
the anti-slavery labourers were growing tired of the agitation. The
task had been an arduous one—had demanded considerable toil and
incurred much odium. The philanthropists were stigmatised as “_the
saints_,” as “_canting hypocrites_,” and by other terms equally
expressive of the ire and malignity of their opponents; and while
there were numbers among us who were willing to suffer any kind of
martyrdom in this good cause, there was a still greater multitude
who had been galvanised, rather than vitally quickened into
activity, and longed, from the inert characters of their hearts and
benevolence, to relapse again into their wonted apathy. The money
therefore was paid down quite as much to release these worried
philanthropists from travail, as to meet any supposed equitable
claim of the slave-holder; and no sooner was the contract of
emancipation sealed than these soldiers of humanity threw off their
armour, and retired from the fray; and hence, though slavery has
been abolished in our colonies, it has been allowed to vegetate and
grow in the United States and elsewhere.

Now all this showed that we were not sound at heart. Because the
negroes perishing under the iron sceptre of the American Republican
were just as much “our bone and our flesh” as the victims of West
Indian bondage. It is true we had more control over the condition of
the one than the other, because the one was our fellow-subject, and
the other was not; but still this very fact, instead of being a
reason for inactivity, ought to have furnished a motive for more
energetic operations. Even the brutish horse puts forth extra
strength when the burden increases, or when a hill is to be climbed;
and we need scarcely add that generally among beasts and men the
greater the foe the more vigorous the effort to overcome him; but,
strange to say, in the anti-slavery cause, we reversed this common
mode of proceeding, and, because the enemy was powerful, our
exertions to vanquish him became proportionably feeble! We know that
many will ask what could we have done? But then the very question
betrays the state of their hearts. True philanthropy is never at a
loss for expedients to accomplish her benevolent purpose, and
therefore never retires because there is a lion or a mountain in the
way. Its faith can stop the mouth of the one, or slay him
altogether, and remove the other into the midst of the sea. Before
we close this paper, we shall, perhaps, show that if we had not been
weary in well doing, we might have brought an immense amount of
influence against American slavery, which, long before this, would
have produced the most happy results.

There was one circumstance which especially contributed to paralyse
our efforts for the emancipation of American slaves. Just about the
time that we liberated our brethren in the British colonies, we
heard a great deal about revivals of religion in the United States,
and we were told that the Spirit from on high was poured out on
transatlantic churches and congregations in almost Pentecostal
abundance; and what was more astonishing, the slave-holders were
said to be remarkably favoured with these supposed tokens of Divine
favour. The writer remembers that in those days, when he was about
to offer some remarks at an anti-slavery meeting, he was called
aside by a minister of religion, and especially reminded of the
great piety of many of the slave-owners, and therefore exhorted to
be very tender in his animadversions! He was allowed to be as severe
as he pleased on the poor ignorant, blind, dead, unconverted
traffickers in human flesh! but the enlightened, pious, spiritual
holders of slaves were, forsooth, to be treated with the utmost
lenity!! Our Saviour’s rule was thus to be reversed; for he who knew
his Lord’s will and did things worthy of stripes, was to be beaten
with _few_ stripes! but he who knew _not_ his Lord’s will, was to be
beaten with _many_ stripes!!

That the people of England should have allowed themselves to be
duped in this manner, is almost equal to an eighth wonder of the
world. Why, there is as great probability that the Holy Spirit will
be poured out upon Satan as upon men and women who for “paltry pelf”
hold their brethren in bondage. Had such a phenomenon taken place,
the very first fruit would have been the breaking “of every yoke.”
Strange that people who read the New Testament should have supposed
that the Holy Ghost could have been granted to the worst of tyrants
without destroying their tyranny and rendering them abolitionists. A
real Christian man never “confers with flesh and blood.” Poverty,
dungeons, racks, losses, and tortures of every kind, are cheerfully
endured in the cause of humanity, justice, liberty, and religion,
and therefore a slave-holder endued with the special influences of
the Holy Spirit would instantly have braved penury and death rather
than have continued to retain in bondage his poor brethren and
sisters.

The sum and substance of all true religion is love to God and love
to man, and when the Spirit is poured out on any individual or body
of individuals, he sheds abroad the love of God in the heart; and
this invariably exhibits itself in benevolence of life. The apostle
John is plain even to what some would call bluntness on this matter.
“If a man say ‘I love God,’ and hateth his brother, he is a _liar_:
for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he
love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from
him, that he who loveth God, loves his brother also.” Now the negro
is both “_neighbour_” and “_brother_” to his master, and unless his
owner loves him as he loves himself, he has no real religion, and
not one particle of evidence that the Spirit has been poured out
upon him, or that the love of God has been shed abroad in his heart
by the Holy Ghost. It was therefore the height of absurdity to talk
of a revival of religion in the heart of any one so long as he held
his brother in bondage; because he does not love him as he loves
himself, and consequently is a stranger to the love of God and to
vital Christianity. Love to our brother, prompting us to give him
equal rights and blessings with ourselves, whatever may be his
colour or country, is a perfect window to the soul, and renders the
heart transparent. On the contrary, the plain language of John,
which we have just quoted, assures us that every individual who
professes to love God while he does not love his brother, is “a
_liar_.” And it must be remembered that the love of which John
speaks is not that sickly sort of charity which will bestow a few
pence or privileges on a brother while we rob him of liberty and his
natural rights, but it is that “perfect love” which loves every
human being as we love ourselves, and will make any sacrifice for
the purpose of developing this love.

We may congratulate the real friends of emancipation on the progress
of public opinion in this affair. Our churches refuse communion with
slave-holders. We deny their Christianity. Their deeds show that
they are strangers to the love of God. They have not learnt the A B
C of the Gospel: they sacrifice everything to gain. Mammon is their
god, and to enrich themselves and their families they traffic in
human flesh and blood. They do violence to every natural affection
which Jehovah has implanted in the human soul, and thus offer one of
the greatest insults to the Majesty of Heaven. The great curse of
the slave is that God has created him a human being. He suffers
severely from the chain, the scourge, and other instruments of
cruelty; but the greatest of all torments is his possession of a
heart. Slaves, to be happy, ought to be created without any
susceptibilities. Love is the cement of society, and the angel which
blesses all the relations of life. A world of love would be a second
paradise, and the bright reflection of heaven and of the Deity. “God
is love.” No tongue can tell, no heart can conceive the unspeakable
blessings and joys which spring from the tender affections of
parents, children, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, and friends.
What would life be without these? God has so constituted us that
there can be no real happiness without love; and yet this precious
feeling, which comes to us fresh from the heart of the Deity,
constitutes the Negro’s hell upon earth. Talk of racks, dungeons,
thumb-screws, and other tortures of the Inquisition, slavery
embodies them all. To tear relatives from relatives, and friends
from friends; to sever the brother from the sister, the husband from
the wife, and the child from its mother, inflicts far more suffering
on the soul than any outward scourge can lay on the body.
Consequently slavery is the monster of monsters, and the
slave-holder is the head and chief of all tyrants who have ever
cursed the world. He shall therefore no longer stand before us in
the garb of Christianity, but shall be exhibited to the world as the
lowest, worst, and basest of all criminals, and as such he shall be
refused the right hand of fellowship, and expelled from the pale of
the Christian Church.

Nothing has ever augured better for the cause of emancipation than
the popularity of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” The benevolent authoress has
thrown so many bewitching charms into her narrative, that she has
fascinated every one, and may justly be called the Enchantress of
the age. She is read by all ranks and classes. We are amused
everywhere by the sight of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” We meet the little
British National Schoolboy going home and reading his “Uncle Tom,”
as affording him greater amusement than his hoop, his top, or his
marbles. And we find the grave divine and scholar, in the
first-class railway carriage, with his more costly “Uncle Tom.” We
see the lady in her chariot, who has gone out for a ride to enjoy
the scenery, and taste the breeze of heaven, beguiled from
surrounding objects by the touching pages of Mrs. Stowe. We have
witnessed a whole family of children to turn from every other
pursuit and amusement to enjoy this mental and moral treat. It has
come with them to their meals, and yielded them such a repast that
the luxuries of the table were almost unheeded. And then the
servants also sought it at every interval, and read it with avidity
by stealth. In a word, it is the favourite of the saint and the
sinner, the sage and the frivolous, the believer and the unbeliever,
the young and the old, the grave and the gay, the learned and the
illiterate, the rude and the polished, the sad and the cheerful. And
nothing could be more opportune for the cause of humanity. Mrs.
Stowe must hereafter take her stand by the side of Clarkson,
Wilberforce, and others, as one of the chief instruments raised up
by Providence to burst the fetters of the slave, and let the
oppressed go free.

We trust, indeed we feel sure, that the slumbering embers of
anti-slavery zeal will, by means of this volume, be kindled into
active power. We have influence enough among us to move the world on
this topic, and all that we require is cooperation and union. The
pulpit, the press, and the platform must speak out once more, and by
its thunders shake the whole world of slavery. Already the old theme
is firing the British heart. Week after week the _Morning
Advertiser_ appeals and instructs and arouses. Nor has it laboured
in vain. Far and near the friends of the slave look to it as their
tower of strength. In America we have a goodly number of
abolitionists as our fellow-helpers, and “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” will
increase them a thousandfold. The book speaks to the intellect, the
reason, and the heart. Women are said to possess an innate power of
arriving at truth, without employing the tedious metaphysics of men,
and here we have a glorious example. In “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” we have
logic stripped of its dryness, and clothed with all the charms of
romance. We would as soon believe in the power of the planters to
reverse the revolutions of the planets as to resist the influence of
Mrs. Stowe. The voice of humanity is the voice of God, and is
essentially omnipotent. As a punishment for not having listened to
this divine oracle, the slave-holders must have the humiliation of
being vanquished by a woman. And, after all, what more natural than
that the woes of our race should owe their softest, sweetest, and
consequently most powerful, utterances to the heart of the sex which
was created to bless the world with its tenderest sympathies.

We are thus placed on a vantage ground from which it would be base
to retire, especially as we have been raised thus high by the talent
and benevolence of a female. Christian chivalry has now open before
it a race of glory, compared with which the tilts and tournaments of
the olden time are the veriest trifles. The whole country is
baptised with anti-slavery zeal, just ready to burst forth in every
possible way to emancipate the slave. We must have public meetings
everywhere.

The “braying of Exeter Hall,” like the ass of Balaam, has, in ten
thousand instances, rebuked the madness of our modern false
prophets, who, from love of filthy lucre, have gone forth to curse
God’s Israel, because they have left the house of bondage. It is
only for the friends of humanity once more to gird themselves for
their work, and in a few years there will be another and more
extensive triumph over the foes of liberty and the negro.

We can also expostulate. The life of William Allen shows how
powerful the voice of an unofficial individual may be, when that
voice is the voice of reason, justice, and philanthropy. He brought
the tyrants of Europe on their knees before the Majesty of Heaven,
and there constrained them to ameliorate the laws which oppressed
their subjects. Why should not the diplomacy of England be
christianised? If this had been done years ago, we might have
converted Napoleon into a man of peace, and saved the nation a
thousand millions of taxation. Humanity is the genius of economy.
Christian diplomacy would long ago have burst the fetters of the
continent, and could now effect wonders in every part of the globe.
It is left with the electors to say, whether foreign ambassadors,
consuls, &c., shall continue to be the mere minions of mammon, or
become the missionaries of justice and philanthropy. But supposing
we failed here, there is power beyond that of bureaucratic
officials; the denunciations we utter against the rulers of the
slave will be carried by the birds of the air to the ears of these
tyrants, and make their hearts quiver and knees shake like those of
Belshazzar. The words of justice require no patent from courts to
render them authoritative. The stamp of Heaven is upon them, and
though spoken by a Paul in chains, they pierce the hearts of despots
and make them tremble. We mistake if we suppose that conscience is
altogether dead in the souls of slave-holders. Heaven has decreed
that the wretch who is deaf to the small still voice of duty and
mercy, shall be horrified by the thunders of guilt, and feel a hell
within. “Haley,” hoping to cheat the devil when he has made his
fortune; and “Legree” trembling for fear of ghosts and hobgoblins,
are no creatures of fiction, but the truthful delineations of the
conscious degradation and forebodings of the trader in human blood.

And further, cannot _consistency_ utter a plea? There is nothing,
perhaps, at which men labour more earnestly than to appear
consistent. But what fellowship can there be between liberty and
slavery? Slavery is a foul blot on the escutcheon of the United
States; and every patriotic American feels it to be so. Here, in the
land of liberty, Freedom receives her deepest wound in the house of
her vaunting friends. The enemies of tyranny over the world are
taunted with the despotism of the American democrat. The infidel of
our day draws his most potent arguments from the vices and faults of
professing Christians; and the advocates of despotism act in the
same manner, and procure their artillery from the barbarism of
American slave-holders. We must then assail this inconsistency until
the guilty parties blush and are ashamed. The continual dropping of
water will wear away stones, and the persevering reiterations of
truth shall eventually prevail, and make even slave-holders relent
and listen to the voice of consistency and humanity.

We have had among us glorious specimens of what the slave can be. To
those who talk of his inferior powers and limited rights, we point
to such men as Frederick Douglass, Wells Brown, Henson, Garnett, and
Dr. Pennington. It was our privilege to enter the hall at
Heidelberg, just as the academy conferred on Dr. Pennington his
diploma. And is this the man that the slave-holder would sell as he
would a horse or bullock? What is the reply of humanity to this
question? I need not dwell on the mind, talents, and piety of Brown,
Henson, or Garnett. The country has long since borne witness to
these. Exeter-hall has often resounded with the loftiest strains of
eloquence, but never has it listened to a more intellectual,
eloquent, and soul-stirring tongue, than that of Frederick Douglass,
and yet this is the man, on whose head the planters have set a
price, because he obeyed the voice of nature and of God in running
away from the horrors of slavery. But why advance these examples?
There is not a field of slaves, a slave-market, or a negro cabin,
but proclaims the equality of the African with the rest of the human
family. The tears, cries, and broken hearts which every separation
by the dealer occasions, proclaim that the sympathies of the slave
are equal to those of the rest of mankind. Every argument used by
these sons and daughters of bondage, every prayer they offer, every
speech they make, and every sermon they preach, prove that all the
essentials of soul belong to them in as much native richness as to
us. ’Tis true everything has been done to degrade them. The
cruelties practised by Simon the cobbler to deprave and demoralise
the Dauphin of France, and which awakened the execration of the
world, are every day being followed by the planters of America. What
if any of us had had the sphere of our knowledge contracted to the
smallest span, and our language confined to a few words of the most
outlandish _patois_, is there one man among us that would surpass
them in their present condition? Where would Milton, Shakspeare, or
Newton have been under such training? Considering the debasing
education to which they have been doomed, the slaves are our equals,
if not our superiors; every part of their history shows the truth of
the words of our poet—

“Fleecy locks and black complexion,
Cannot forfeit Nature’s claim;
Skins may differ, but affection
Dwells in black and white the same;

Deem our nation brutes no longer,
Till some reason ye shall find,
Worthier of regard and stronger
Than the colour of our kind.

Slaves of gold, whose sordid dealings
Tarnish all your boasted powers,
Prove that you have human feelings
Ere you proudly question ours.”

The passing of “The Fugitive Slave Bill” adds strength to our cause.
This measure has shocked every human heart; it has libelled
humanity; it has sunk the Republican below most of the tyrants that
have ever scourged society; it has insulted the world, and
blasphemed the Eternal. It commands and compels free men to become
informers and kidnappers, and thus degrades them below the meanest
of our race. It is an attempt to render freedom the slave of
slavery. A viler law has never degraded any statute book. However,
its iniquity and its cruelty have aroused thousands to action who
before were asleep; and when the history of the emancipation of
American slaves shall be written, the narrator will triumphantly
relate that the infamous “Fugitive Slave Bill” very greatly hastened
this glorious consummation.

We have also another material aid in the clerical teachings of
pro-slavery priests and preachers. We shall hereafter have to thank
Dr. Spring, of New York; Dr. Parker, of Philadelphia; Dr. Stuart, of
Andover; Dr. Spencer, of Brooklyn; the Right Rev. Bishop Hopkins, of
Vermont; and a host of other reverends; for their advocacy of the
cause of slavery. This outrage on Christianity by its own ministers
has shocked the whole Christian world. Even the planters despise
these sycophants. To hear men in the sacred desk, and in the name of
the Redeemer of the world, advocate a system which cherishes
ignorance, vice, debauchery, dishonesty, and murder, out-Herods
anything that was ever taught by the most depraved heathens and
infidels. Even Pagans had their dark groves and other midnight
recesses for their sensual orgies. No atheist or barbarian has yet
taught that the infant should be torn from the breast of its mother,
and sold like a swine to the murderous dealer in human flesh. It was
left for the 19th century, and doctors of divinity in a Christian
garb, to arrive at this decree of blasphemy, impiety, and
immorality. Well, we thank them for their teachings, we congratulate
them for their boldness in iniquity, and we will repeat their
sayings until we make every ear in Christendom tingle with their
presumption and inhumanity.

We have thus briefly shown that the friends of the slave have every
thing on their side, and may now make a noble stand in the cause of
liberty. Providence is remarkably appearing on their behalf, and
pointing out the path of duty and victory. “Is not the Lord gone up
before us.” As far as England is concerned, the odium of an
anti-slavery movement has passed away. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” has
rekindled the zeal of the lukewarm, and baptized with holy fire
myriads who before cared nothing for the negro. Let us only do our
duty, and this foul blot on humanity and daring insult to the Deity
shall ere long become the history of a by-gone age; and a few years
hence the system shall be deemed too monstrous to be believed but as
a myth of some misanthrope who felt a malignant pleasure in
libelling his species.

[ENTERED AT STATIONERS’ HALL.]

John Cassell, Ludgate-hill.

-----

Footnote 1:

A son of that distinguished friend of humanity, WILLIAM WILBERFORCE.

Footnote 2:

“Take counsel, execute judgment; make thy shadow as the night in the
midst of the noon-day; hide the outcasts; bewray not him that
wandereth. Let my outcasts dwell with thee, Moab; be thou a covert to
them, from the face of the spoiler.”—Isaiah xvi. 3, 4.

Footnote 3:

“Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not
to me.”—_Jesus Christ._ Matt. xxv. 45.

Footnote 4:

“Is it not that thou deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring
the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked
that thou cover him? and that thou hide not thyself from thine own
flesh?” “If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the
putting forth of the finger, and speaking of vanity,” &c.—Isaiah
lviii. 6–9.

Footnote 5:

“Therefore, all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you,
do ye even so to them; for this is the law and the prophets.”—_Jesus
Christ._ Matt. vii. 12.

Footnote 6:

“Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped
from his master unto thee. He shall dwell with thee; even among you in
that place which he shall choose, in one of thy gates, where it liketh
him best; thou shalt not oppress him.”—Deut. xxiii. 15, 16.

Footnote 7:

“Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”—Lev. xix. 18; Matt. xix.
19.

Footnote 8:

“Hearken unto me, ye that know righteousness; the people in whose
heart is my law: fear yet not the reproach of men, neither be ye
afraid of their revilings. For the moth shall eat them up like a
garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool; but my righteousness
shall be for ever, and my salvation from generation to
generation.”—Isaiah li. 7, 8.

Footnote 9:

“Ye that love the Lord, hate evil.”—Ps. xcvii. 10. “The fear of the
Lord is to hate evil.”—Prov. viii. 13.

Footnote 10:

“Who art thou, that thou shouldst be afraid of a man? * * * And
forgettest the Lord thy Maker, * * * and has feared continually every
day, because of the fury of the oppressor, as if he were ready to
destroy? And where is the fury of the oppressor?”—Isa. li. 12, 13, 14.

Footnote 11:

“We ought to obey God rather than men.”—Acts v. 29.

Footnote 12:

“The captive exile hasteth that he maybe loosed,” &c.—Isa. li. 15.

Footnote 13:

Haynau.

Footnote 14:

Editor of the _Glasgow Courier_. Poor Motherwell! I have it from a
mutual friend that he sympathised _with_ the cause of Freedom, while
paid to write against it.

Footnote 15:

Daniel Webster’s oration, at the laying the corner-stone of Bunker
Hill Monument, 17 June, 1825.

Footnote 16:

Daniel Webster’s speech in the Senate of the U. S., 7 March, 1850.

Footnote 17:

Daniel Webster’s speech at the Capron Springs, Virginia, 1851.

Footnote 18:

It is vain to say that rich governments cannot, and do not, offer
effective temptations to clever and eloquent men, whose religious
views differ from the national form, to induce them to adopt the
latter.

Footnote 19:

Congress, the legislative department, and, of course, the judicial,
its interpreter, were intended to be founded on such undoubted
principles of liberty, that it would be difficult for them to use
their everywhere acknowledged rights, and perform their everywhere
expected duties, without first putting aside the strongest impediment
to their exercise—slavery. In our judgment this has been done. There
is no truth in public law more certain than that protection and
allegiance are reciprocal. They must exist together or not at all. The
power of the United States is adequate for the protection of all
within her limits, and from all within them she expects allegiance. If
she is informed, in any way to be relied on, that any person is
restrained of his rights under the constitution of the United States,
it is her duty to see him set at liberty, if he be confined, and see
that he is redressed. It is in vain for Congress to excuse itself from
acting, by saying that it is a State concern. Can a citizen of the
United States, if he be a citizen, be tortured or tormented by a
State, when there is no pretence that he has violated the law of
either?

The constitution of the United States authorises no man to hold
another as a slave. The United States has no power to hold a slave. It
matters not that it was _intended_ to allow some to hold others as
their slaves. A very vile person may _intend_ to lock up in prison an
innocent and just one, but through mistake he leaves the door
unlocked; does this, in the eyes of any reasonable men, prevent his
making his escape through the door? We are certain not. The only
proper inquiry here is, which is supreme, the government of the Union,
or the government of a particular State of it? It is not necessary to
answer this. If the first deal with no one as a slave, the subordinate
cannot by law. Persons may be held as slaves by fraud, by cunning, by
taking advantage of the ignorance in which we hold them by force, or a
successful combination of force, but not by LAW.

Footnote 20:

“Our house stood within a few rods of the Chesapeake bay, whose broad
bosom was ever white with sails from every quarter of the habitable
globe. Those beautiful vessels, robed in purest white, so delightful
to the eye of freemen, were to me so many shrouded ghosts to terrify
and torment me with thoughts of my wretched condition. I have often,
in the deep stillness of a summer’s Sabbath, stood all alone upon the
lofty banks of that noble bay, and traced, with saddened heart and
tearful eye, the countless number of sails moving off to the mighty
ocean. The sight of these always affected me powerfully. My thoughts
would compel utterance; and then, with no audience but the Almighty, I
would pour out my soul’s complaint, in my rude way, with an apostrophe
to the moving multitude of ships:—

“You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my
chains, and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I
sadly before the bloody whip! You are freedom’s swift-winged angels
that fly around the world; I am confined in bands of iron! O that I
were free! O that I were on one of your gallant decks, and under your
protecting wing! Alas! betwixt me and you the turbid waters roll. Go
on, go on. O that I could also go! Could I but swim! If I could fly!
O, why was I born a man, of whom to make a brute! The glad ship is
gone; she hides in the dim distance. I am left in the hottest hell of
unending slavery. O God, save me! God, deliver me! Let me be free! Is
there any God? Why am I a slave? I will run away. * * * Only think of
it; one hundred miles straight north, and I am free! Try it? Yes! God
helping me, I will. It cannot be that I shall live and die a
slave. * * *”—_Autobiography of Douglass_, pp. 64, 65.

Footnote 21:

“There was no getting rid of it [the thought of his condition]. It was
pressed upon me by every object within sight or hearing, animate or
inanimate. The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal
wakefulness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more for ever. It
was heard in every sound, and seen in everything. It was ever present
to torment me with a sense of my wretched condition. I saw nothing
without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt
nothing without feeling it. It looked from every star; it smiled in
every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every
storm.”—_Autobiography_, pp. 40, 41.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

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